NY Post blocks access to its website on iPads to drive app purchases

The NY Post has started blocking access to its website from the iPad's native …

The New York Post has started blocking access to its website on the iPad as a way to drive those customers in the direction of the paid NY Post app in the App Store. Trying to access the paper via the Safari browser on the iPad results in a redirect page that points them to the app, as well as a few other basic services.

While Safari is a no-go, Staci Kramer of PaidContent notes that NY Post's site works fine through the alternative browsers Skyfire and Opera Mini. "It is one of the most poorly conceived paywall efforts I’ve come across," Kramer says.

When New York Times raised its paywall, it made one big concession to readers and left the paid parts of their site accessible through social networking links and search engine results. But the NY Post has even botched this: clicking links from Facebook on the iPad redirect to the screen size app advertisement, while links from Twitter will display the articles in Twitter's in-app browser just fine.

As a Murdoch publication, the NY Post appears to be getting pushed in the direction of The Daily, which exists only as a paid app on the iPad. The NY Post app costs $1.99 to download and gets the customer 30 days of access; after that, it's $6.99 for one month, $39.99 for six months, or $74.99 for a year. By comparison, The Daily is free to download, and costs 99 cents a week or $39.99 for a year's subscription.

By clicking one of the buttons on the NY Post redirect page, users can also subscribe to the electronic edition of the NY Post and get access to the web page—again at various prices, including $9.18 for four weeks or $93.30 for the year. We're surprised that the NY Post isn't pimping this harder than their app, given that Apple recently relaxed their restrictions on making website content available through iPad or iPhone apps, so companies no longer have to route subscriptions through their App Store.

Does this mean you can't even see the free content on the iPad? I hope it'll just stop people from reading them and will not drive even one into a subscription. But whatever, it's not like the NY Post is a great paper anyway ;)

This is what I was coming here to say. I know desktop FireFox has a plugin that lets you change the user agent to anything you want, I'm sure someone could work up one for Safari. After that, any attempts to block one partcular browser will always fail as people can switch what their browser identifies itself as.

Mobile Safari doesn't give you that much control, but you can easily download a different browser and use the site. That'll probably lead to the site using the operating system from the user agent string instead.

How long will it be before Murdoch or some other media company signs a deal with Apple or MS or whomever that restricts the user to a particular browser or application to view their website on a PC or Mac or 'phone/tablet?

This issue highlights bigger questions in play about how the internet is evolving and it certainly not evolving in a way that is to the benefit of ordinary users.

From issues around net neutrality, community broadband and paywalls, the net is being corporatised to the detriment of users.

Most of these "apps" don't do anything that you couldn't do in a web browser. And actually they eliminate the primary feature of the web which is that you can hyperlink into and out of every site. I predict these apps will eventually go the way of AOL exclusive content.

Most of these "apps" don't do anything that you couldn't do in a web browser. And actually they eliminate the primary feature of the web which is that you can hyperlink into and out of every site. I predict these apps will eventually go the way of AOL exclusive content.

Yeah I never use content apps if I can avoid it. Too much of a pain to switch in and out of the browser. Ok, I use the IMDB app but that's about it.

In this case, News is a highly competitive commodity. Unlike ISP's, where there is severely limited choice and often long contract periods, there are a host of news providers, mostly of which do not directly charge.

I don't think the situations are equivalent. (I could see it for certain kinds of website, where there wasn't much market choice, but news?)

Hulu did the same thing for its service on the PS3. It used to be that I could watch Hulu stuff through the web browser. Then about two years ago it blocked PS3s so the only access could be through the then-unannounced Hulu Plus.

Atomic Web lets you change the user agent to one of six or seven predefined things, and it's just 99c for both the iPad and iPhone versions (which are actually different). I started using it instead of Mobile Safari because it has tabbed browsing, but I've dealt with the no-mobile-browsers-allowed issue with it too.

Atomic Web lets you change the user agent to one of six or seven predefined things, and it's just 99c for both the iPad and iPhone versions (which are actually different). I started using it instead of Mobile Safari because it has tabbed browsing, but I've dealt with the no-mobile-browsers-allowed issue with it too.

I use Atomic Web on my iphone and ipad, works very well, using it because of the tabbed browsing too!

I'm quite sure they know that certain people will not pay, but those people wouldn't have paid either way. They do know that some people will pay, though. iPads are not cheap, and if you have one (especially if you bought the second one as well as the first one), they reasonably assume that you probably have some extra money kicking around you can kick their way. And I'm sure it will pay off.

For the rest of us freeloaders, we'll just get our news elsewhere, but we weren't gonna fork over our hard-earned cash even if they didn't do this. So we don't factor into their decisions.

Seriously, in this day and age of a billion news sources (a bit of hyperbole with the "billion" I know, but it's not that far off), if something is blocked on some device I'm using...be in an iPad or Android tablet or whatever....I just move on to something else that works.

I used to be an avid reader of the NY Times until they went behind a pay-wall. I don't even click on Twitter feeds that link there anymore because 9 times out of 10 they want me to register something before I read the article. Screw that, by that time I've moved on to something else. Sure, it may be my ADD addled brain that makes me become impatient. But if I have to register or pay to view the almost exact same content that I can get somewhere else that's supported via advertising, then screw it. I don't have to wait, or sign up or sign in...I'm there reading the article and getting my info.

And boo-hoo, I don't get to read the NY Post? Seriously? The fricken Post?

Also, I wonder if Apple and Google will mark their browsers on their tablet OS's with just being normal Safari or Chrome (though, is the Android web client in Android Chrome? I'm not sure), so that websites just see it coming in as a normal browser that could be from a PC. I know they like differentiating the different browsers and on devices so you can get analytics that say what platform is accessing this web-site or that. But then you get this bullshit.

Google should have done that a long time ago with their Google-TV so sites can't just arbitrarily block their content from the thing.

Sure, it may be my ADD addled brain that makes me become impatient. But if I have to register or pay to view the almost exact same content that I can get somewhere else that's supported via advertising, then screw it. I don't have to wait, or sign up or sign in...I'm there reading the article and getting my info.

It's got nothing to do with ADD, and more to do with the duplicity across the Internet. Site A and Site B both want to make money, so they take content from Site C (the AP, in this case, or an event/story that isn't even a site) and Site A sells it, and Site B puts ads up. Most people are gonna just go to Site B. The sites that can make the Internet work for them and make the Internet profitable are going to swim. The rest will sink. Nature of the beast.

Goofball_Jones wrote:

Also, I wonder if Apple and Google will mark their browsers on their tablet OS's with just being normal Safari or Chrome (though, is the Android web client in Android Chrome? I'm not sure), so that websites just see it coming in as a normal browser that could be from a PC. I know they like differentiating the different browsers and on devices so you can get analytics that say what platform is accessing this web-site or that. But then you get this...

No, they won't. They'll leave that up to the user. And no, the Android Browser isn't Chrome at all, though it may be WebKit-based. I don't know. Oh, Wikipedia says: The web browser available in Android is based on the open-source WebKit layout engine, coupled with Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine. The browser scores a 93/100 on the Acid3 Test. So it's not Chrome, but shares the layout and JavaScript engines, but only gets 93% on Acid3, where (Wikipedia says) Chrome gets 100% (as do Chromium and Iron).